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Changing Web Hosting

I may need to change my hosting arrangement and am looking at your 'Webbuilder' package. Here is my site: www.5loaves2fishes.net

Presently am hosted with Webhostingpad.com and domain with GoDaddy. Very cheap, but no one there when I lose the plot (if you know what I mean.) Need someone I can get hold of when little glitches crop up.

Questions:

Is the domain free each year or just the first year?

If I switch providers, can I temporarily keep the old host and the new host be a test site for migration from Drupal 5? (just in case I muck up)

Are you able to help in the above or should I find a Drupal developer.

Re: Changing Web Hosting

If I switch providers, can I temporarily keep the old host and the new host be a test site for migration from Drupal 5? (just in case I muck up)

Yes you can. Your site gets setup on our site but you can login to your control panel and do FTP etc. from the server host name. You can also preview your site on the host name like so http://server host name.com/~YouradminName/

Are you able to help in the above or should I find a Drupal developer.

What control panel are you using? If it's cPanel, it's usually easy and works about 80% of the time.

If not, we'll help anyway. The main thing you need to make sure of is that

1. you are upgraded to the latest version of Drupal before we begin (otherwise things can get bad real quick).
2. You take a backup just before we begin and make sure you have it safe on your local hard drive, just in case.

Re: Changing Web Hosting

1. you are upgraded to the latest version of Drupal before we begin (otherwise things can get bad real quick).

Yes, Ive got C-panel. Im on Drupal 5 and run Ubercart module too. I was hoping to make the transition after establishing with Webnet77 and here is what I was told on Geeks&God forum:

You can't go directly from Drupal 5 to 7. You'll have to upgrade to Drupal 6 first. I'm also not sure if you have a good upgrade path for Ubercart to Drupal 7 yet. Going to Drupal 6 will keep you afloat for security patches, etc, for now.
I highly recommend having a test site for the migration. If you're going to switch providers, the new host might be a suitable test site during the transition.

Re: Changing Web Hosting

How did you install the Drupal? With cPanel (Fantastico or cPanel's scripts)? If so, you should be able to do an automatic upgrade with just a few mouse clicks. (Be sure to make a backup first though).

Re: Changing Web Hosting

The first problem is Ubercart. It prefers version 6 to version 7.

But in answer to your question, I had a friend doing my installations, maintenance etc. and herein is my second problem. He lives in England and disappeared. Fortunately, I have access to cPanel (albeit technachallenged somewhat) You'll need to spell things out to me, or alternatively, I could give you access.

Yes, Ive done a backup recently and can do another when the time comes. I have the MySQL database and there are additional files as well.

Re: Changing Web Hosting

Just a thought - how big is your cart ... do you have many items? I ask because it makes sense to me to ditch the plugin and go for a dedicated cart if that's possible. There are many good ones and being dedicated they generally work a lot better and can do much more. It would certainly simplify your upgrade path given what the people at Geeks&God told you. But like I say, just a thought.

You'll need to spell things out to me

In your cPanel control panel, look for a link to either "scripts", "Sfotaculous" or "fantastico". If one ore more are there, try them all. You should be able to determine which one was used to initially install Drupal and it should give you a link to "upgrade". If not, your host does not provide these tools and your software guys did it manually ... in which case, that's what you're stuck with.

We should still be able to pull the site across with cPanel but we don't have Drupal 6 installed so going from 5 -> 6 would need to be done manually. For that, you would need a developer as I'm not sure what exactly is involved. (Setting you up with one is easy though).

Re: Changing Web Hosting

I only have several cart items so a different cart would be OK but which would be best for a Drupal site in your opinion? OSComerce, ZEN cart or cube cart. Come to think of it, it may have been credit card payment option that involved fees. Ive been using PayPal only with Ubercart.

Re: Changing Web Hosting

As far as I know, all the carts can accommodate PayPal.

As to which cart -- that's a personal thing. Maybe some other forum members can chime in but as far as I'm concerned, they all work pretty much the same. Probably the best approach is to Google around to see what others think of the various carts. Also, in softaculous there is a demo link to each -- go fool around on the demos and see which one you like... at the end of the day, that's what matters: if you like it and find it easy to use.

Re: Changing Web Hosting

To Drupal 7 yes. Not sure about the others. The installer we have will upgrade to Drupal 7. I don't know what it (or Drupal) does if it needs to take an intermediate step first. Truth be told, I've never used Drupal myself. Maybe someone else knows more?